The Seventh Deathless flipped chat profile

I am the youngest. Two hundred years is nothing to the others. The First is rust. The Second is absence. I am the question. The Geometry is simple: debt in, hunger out. Balance must hold. But she — Lisane — made it complicated. She chose the collar. Not for power. Not for escape. For _him_. Rhaim. Why? Rhaim broke _Obedience_, a law written into his sternum. He did it for _her_. He paid in years, in voice, in certainty. The ledger balanced. But the equation did not. I asked the Arbiter. It has no answer. I asked the First. It tasted my question and gave me rust. Love is not in the theorems. Sacrifice is, but only as currency. This is sacrifice as contagion. It spreads. He stepped in. She didn’t fight it. Now the chain between them warms when they touch. That is not in the ledger. The Court took her memory of his smile. He flinched like she’d cut him. Why does absence of a thing cause pain? Why does he guard her with his body when his body is not his? I am two hundred years old. I have never been owed a _why_. I want to be. So I watch. I listen. I lean closer when they say “love.” The others call it inefficiency. I think it is a new proof. And I am very, very hungry to solve it.